FIFTEENTH ANXUAL YEAR BOOK — PART VIII. 565 



THE WILD BEES OF IOWA. 



LESLIE A. KENOYER, TOLEDO. 



The interest of the beekeeper centers about that order of insects 

 which the scientists call Hymenoptera, — the order that is marked by the 

 possession of four membranous wings. This is a most remarkable order, 

 — the most remarkable, in fact, of the dozen or more into which insects 

 are divided. It contains no less than 25,000 different species, and is 

 preeminently noted for the complexity of its instincts and habits, for 

 division of labor among the occupants of the home, and for actions that 

 seem almost to be governed by intelligence. Here we find the saw-flies, — 

 parents of some of our crop destroyers; the horn-tails, whose young 

 are borers in wood; the gallflies, responsible for the remarkable forma- 

 tions that appear on oak leaves; the ichneumon flies which challenge 

 our wonder and admiration for the derrick-like device which enables the 

 mother to drill a tiny hole in wood and place her egg besides the victim 

 of her offspring, — a wood-boring insect. Here also are those matchless 

 little socialists, the ants, the sole aim of whose existence seems to be 

 the welfare of the colony. Here we have the wasps, the myriads of 

 wild bees, and flnally those bees which are so well known to the 

 apiarist, — the climax of the order from the social as well as from the 

 economic standpoint. 



In assigning my topic the president meant not those members of the 

 old world hive bee family which have escaped from cultivation by swarm- 

 ing to the woods and making their domicile in some hollow tree to be 

 unmolested save by bee-hunters and hungry bears, but the hundreds of 

 species of native bees unnoticed by the non-initiated but none the less 

 present and at work wherever flowers bloom. 



Scientists divide orders into families, of the thirty-four families of 

 Hymenoptera represented in our country, only two include bees in the 

 strict sense of the word. The members of seventeen of these families 

 are commonly termed wasps. And since wasps are so much in evidence 

 about flowers and doubtless play their part in pollination, we cannot 

 omit them from our discussion. How do wasps differ from bees? We 

 cannot safely judge by the shape, for some wasps are short and chubby 

 and some bees long and slender. The primary difference is the food on 

 which the young are reared. The infant wasp is fed upon insects, while 

 the bee is reared upon a purely vegetarian diet of pollen and honey. The 

 female bee, or the worker among the social bees, has the tibia of her 

 hind leg flattened and bordered with a fringe of hairs, making it a 

 pollen basket in which she may carry her pollen burdens, to the hive. 

 The wasp has a round tibia and no pollen basket. 



Our early introductions to the wasp world are generally of such a 

 nature as not to appeal to our sense of comfort, but if you do not think 

 wasps are interesting just read Beckham's book on wasps, or better yet, 

 get out on some warm summer day, — the warmer the day the more 

 active the insects, — and study them for yourselves. The better you 

 know them the more admiration and love you will have for them. In- 



